The World Line of the Horizon Star

Some would say I was a lost man in a lost world

The eggs have spoken: I am doomed! Beware the calends of March!

February 26th, 2004

Current Mood:

apprehensive

Current Music:

Bush: "Machine Head"

It is a day of dreadful portents. At eleven this morning the wind was still howling outside my windows, and had been since early this morning. It was raining off and on. So far it has blown a couple of branches of the camphor tree in my front yard onto the lawn. I decided to stay home today and until the end of the week and take off Monday too so that I can accomplish packing for the move, which goes down Sunday. I feel as overwhelmed as a one-legged man in a free-for-all ass-kicking contest.

The eggs have spoken today, and boy, were they pissed! I have mentioned before my morning ovomancy. Well, this morning one egg broke and a stringer of egg white went down the outside edge of the skillet near the handle (bad sign), then the yolk on one of the eggs broke (not a good omen), but the clincher was when I tried to scoop the eggs up with the spatula and deposit them on my toast. Just when I had the spatula under the neatly stacked pair of eggs and was lifting them out of the skillet and onto my sandwitch, the butter gave a little pop and spattered me with a droplet of hot butter right on the wrist causing me to jerk, whereupon the eggs when flying over the edge of the skillet and down between the stove and the wall. I had to move the stove to get the eggs cleaned up before I could fry myself another pair. Needless to say, the eggs have never read so egregiously before. I think I'm doomed.

I did a good bit of packing today. I still am not pleased with my progress. It seems like the more I pack, the more I've got to pack -- and I'm still cherry-picking the easy stuff. The movers are supposed to deliver some boxes tomorrow, but I fear what I told them won't be enough. I've filled about sixteen three-cubic-foot boxes with books, and I think I've only packed about half my library. There are a dozen bookshelves in this house of varying sizes and none of them have any room on them for more books. There's more to be done tomorrow. I hope to have all of the books out of the way early tomorrow. Crystal is coming down to get more of her junk and some more of the stuff belonging to Jackie and Shannon. I have got to get things together faster than this. I want to have all of my stuff packed and ready to go before the movers get here. My place is a logistics nightmare, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I am a logistician's nightmare.

Around noon, I stuck a get-well-soon card in the mail for ingenuemuse because she's getting a root-canal tomorrow (actually, given that it's the wee-small hours right now, I mean later today). She's not had one before and understandably, I think it's making her nervous. Frankly, I've never had one either. I've got just two cavities in my life, although I have had a bunch of baby teeth extracted prior to getting braces, but that doesn't count because I was asleep for it, even if the recovery might be similar. My point is, if you've had a root canal before, or if you just feel the urge to lower the level of anxiety and/or suffering in a fellow human being, go over to her site and offer her some reassurance, encouragement, or Hugs 'n' Slugs™ to buck her up. I mailed her a card around noon and then not an hour later, read an entry of hers on my friends page wherein she mentioned that the procedure is tomorrow. Due to the ambiguousness with which the Mysterious Muse reports dates in her journal, I had been assuming that this thing wasn't until next Monday or Tuesday, since she said it was "less than two weeks away" about a week and a half ago. Fortunately, it is an ill-wind which blows nobody good, and today (mark it on your calendars) I was actually grateful for government inefficiency, which blew me a little good. Yes, the postman had not picked up my card yet, so I was able to snag it out of my mailbox and run it down to the post office to expedite it so that by the time it gets to its destination it will not be moot with anti-climax. Perhaps the eggs were wrong this morning. Heh heh.

In the evening, I drove over to Livermore, a sixty mile trip each way to meet with my new landlord, Vanessa, and pay first and last months of rent and get the key from her. Now I can get in the house to get the water turned on Friday. I think I'll take my older computer over there when I do that so that I don't have to worry about the movers bumping it about too much. I'm not sure when I'm going to shut down my computer. I don't know when, or really even if, Comcast is going to get service running at the new house and I hate being off line. Perhaps I will take this machine over there on Saturday.

On the way back home, I noticed lightning off to the west. It looked like it was somewhere around Davis or possibly Rio Vista. Interesting weather we're having here in central California lately. Lighting is so rare here it's always a notable occurrence, at least for me. I noticed it as I was driving on interstate 5 just south of state route 12. The first few flashes were only caught out of the corner of my eye. I thought it was a search light or some kind of explosion or possibly a flash from arc welding, as infrequent as lightning is here. Heh, it was lightning though. Cool. Too bad it wasn't close enough to enjoy the thunderstorm.

A side note: you mentioned before that you tend to break yolks when you crack eggs. This suggests to me that you have either: 1) shitty eggs, or 2) a weird/poor cracking style. Assuming the latter, let me share a small pointer that you might want to try...

When you crack the egg, initially, just tap it with very little force against any hard edge, say the countertop, the edge of the frying pan, the rim of a bowl or mug (I often scramble my eggs in the latter before pouring, to make an omelette, for instance). This should only barely crack the surface, penetrating no more than 1/4 inch or so into the egg. Essentially, you only need to make enough room for the second step.

Stick your thumb tips into the crack in the egg, side-by-side, without pressing *into* the egg any more than necessary. Don't squeeze the eggs, or they might explode in your hands. Using very little force, pull the edges of the crack directly apart from one another. The trick to not rupturing the yolk, here, is that *all* the force should be directed towards the ends of the egg, with none *into* the egg.

Using this method, I've never broken a yolk, or even made a mess. There are other methods I haven't tried, including tapping all the way around the egg and then pulling the ends away from one another, but this seems to me to lead to the occasional crushing accident. I know there are also folks that can crack and open three eggs at a time, *per hand*. But they're weird freaks that I openly mock.

Anyway, if you're doing something different, you might want to give the above a try.

It was just a droplet of hot butter -- just enough to cause me to jerk. As for the move...Great Holy Hopping Hod! Auuggghh!!! I'm doomed, and overwhelmed. The more I pack, the more it seems there is to pack!